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Prop. 8: It Was the Blacks, Not the Catholics or the Mormons

The dean of California opinion writers, Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters, crunches the numbers on why state voters decided to illegalize gay marriage. And it appears that all the vitriol against Mormons and Catholics, while understandable, is a bit misplaced. It was the huge surge in Barack Obama-supporting black voters, who according to exit polling voted for Prop. 8 by 70 percent to 30 percent, who gave the anti-gay marriage forces the votes they needed to win. Anti-gay blacks got an assist from Latinos who backed Prop. 8 by 53 percent to 47 percent. Walters' Money Quote is after the jump:

"Turnout made the difference. Historically, black Californians have voted in about the same proportion as their population, in the 6 percent to 7 percent range, while Latinos, although more than a third of the state's population, have been about 13 percent of voters. Last week, however, 10 percent of voters were African American while 18 percent were Latino, and applying exit poll data to that extra turnout reveals that the pro-Obama surge among those two groups gave Proposition 8 an extra 500,000-plus votes, slightly more than the measure's margin of victory."
— Robert Gammon